Sunday, January 4, 2009

The Talk of a Lame Duck Presidency

A lot of people are talking about how history will look back on George W's tenure as president as it enters its lame duck stage and then inevitably ends in less than a month.

A lot of people are already giving him the title Worst President Ever. And there's some legitimacy to that claim (I'm not sure the end of a President's term has ever inspired a day-hour-minutes-seconds countdown). He started a war almost universally hated, watched as New Orleans flooded and its residents starved, among countless other things that people cite as making him the worst Oval Office occupant ever.

But worst? Generally, History is a macro-level study. Scrutinizing something on a micro-level is usually left to scholars or journalists.

Bush will go down as a worse-than-most president. The two things that will be remembered about him are the two biggest events that happened under his administration: 9/11 and the War in Iraq. He handled 9/11 stupendously. The War in Iraq was (and continues to be) galactically stupid.

His handling of Katrina won't help either, but that is going to be overshadowed by the 9/11-Iraq tandem.

As for the economic crisis, I feel the jury is still out on that one, but since it happened under his administration its not going to help, and, unfortunately, I don't see the theme of deregulation disappearing any time soon, regardless of the reasonable doubt that continues to surround that theory.

Hey W, it could be worse, you could be Warren G. Harding, Andrew Johnson, or James Buchanan.

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